CLEVELAND — LeBron James secured his fifth straight trip to the N.B.A. finals on Tuesday night, extending a storybook season with the Cleveland Cavaliers, his hometown team, to which he returned this season after a four-year separation.

That James returned older, wiser and more assured of his immense talents after four trips to the finals with the Miami Heat — and two championship rings — was never more apparent than in this Eastern Conference finals series against the top-seeded Atlanta Hawks.

It was a four-game sweep, with James carrying a bruised Cavaliers team on his own weary shoulders through the first three games, averaging 32.7 points, 11.7 rebounds and 10 assists. In the final game, he found some reprieve, sitting the entire fourth quarter as the Cavaliers cruised to a 118-88 victory at Quicken Loans Arena.

Given the lopsided score, the arena-wide party started while James was still on the court. As the third quarter was coming to an end, most of the sellout crowd rose to applaud the team through the period’s closing seconds. The ovations continued at every stoppage of play until the final buzzer.

When it sounded, yellow confetti drifted down from the rafters as the players from the two teams shook hands. James and his teammates bounced up and down, donning white T-shirts and dark hats as the trophy emerged.

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Carroll trying to stop a shot by Kyrie Irving, who scored 16 points in his return to the Cavaliers.CreditJason Miller/Getty Images

“We want to take this the full way,” the team’s owner, Dan Gilbert, said in an interview on the court.

James became the first player to reach five consecutive league finals since 1966, when four members of the Boston Celtics completed the same feat.

In his abbreviated performance Tuesday, he was a seemingly t omnipresent and unstoppable force on the court. He flitted around on defense, spreading his wingspan menacingly in the faces of Hawks players. On offense, he alternated bulldozing runs to the hoop with incisive passes. In stoppages of play, James power-walked to the Cavaliers’ bench and sat almost completely still, like a prizefighter on a boxing ring stool.

Logging 29 minutes on the court, James finished with 23 points, 9 rebounds, 7 assists and 2 steals. He said on Tuesday that he had been receiving round-the-clock treatment for various ailments he declined to disclose. It helped that Kyrie Irving, who had sat out two games with a sore knee, returned to score 16 points in 22 minutes.

Now James has led the Cavaliers back to the finals for the first time since 2007, when the Spurs swept them in four games.

“It’s very emotional to be back in this city,” James said after the game. “When I made my decision to come back here, I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”

He added, “I’m a guy who believes in unfinished business.”

Cleveland’s joy on Tuesday came at the expense of the Hawks, who delighted basketball purists this season with their dynamic offense and team-oriented play. They had no household names on their roster at the start of the season, yet they sent four players to the All-Star Game and finished the regular season with 60 wins. In acknowledgment of the Hawks’ team dynamic, the N.B.A. took the unusual step of naming their entire starting lineup the league’s player of the month in January.

“We’ll learn from tonight, we’ll learn from this series, and we’ll be better going forward,” Hawks Coach Mike Budenholzer said after the game.

The Hawks were never in the game Tuesday. They shot 5 for 32 from 3-point range and were outrebounded, 56-39. Defending James early on, they looked lost.

Three minutes into the first quarter, James sprinted down the left sideline on a breakaway, took a diagonal path to the rim and threw down an emphatic, one-handed dunk. He strutted the length of the court, nodding his chin in exaggerated fashion toward the crowd, like a professional wrestler, as the Hawks called timeout.

The crowd lapped up the theatrics, and the fans grew even louder upon the entrance of Matthew Dellavedova, who became an unlikely hero this week when some members of the Hawks cast him as a dirty player.

It was not until midway through the fourth, when Dellavedova completed a one-handed, putback layup, that Cleveland Coach David Blatt allowed himself to savor the moment.

In a news conference after the game, Blatt allowed himself to reflect on the season. He had left his home in Israel, where he coached since 2010, to get his first N.B.A. job. James had returned home. It had been a winding journey to this point.

“LeBron said, and I think correctly so, we’ve still got a lot to do, and we still have a goal to try to achieve,” Blatt said. “But at the same time, you have to enjoy this for what it is, too.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Cavs Romp, and James Returns to the Finals . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe